Kings show no signs of fatigue, take Game 1 from Rangers in OT

Members of the Los Angeles Kings celebrate Justin Williams's goal in overtime of Game 1 in the NHL Stanley Cup Final hockey series against the New York Rangers on Wednesday, June 4, 2014, in Los Angeles.(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Sure, they’ve played in three straight seven-game series and needed overtime for the fifth time in 22 postseason games to take a 3-2 victory in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Rangers on Wednesday night. But tired? If anything, just call them good.

Justin Williams took advantage of a defensive-zone turnover by Rangers blueliner Dan Girardi and beat Henrik Lundqvist at 4:36 of the first overtime to give the Kings a come-from-behind win to open the series. It was the only time they had the lead all game. If anything, those supposedly tired legs got better as the game went on.

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“We’re not tired, we’re fresh,” said rookie Kings forward Tyler Toffoli. “We want to win. Even if we were tired, we were going to keep going and do everything we could.”

Improvement over the late stages has been somewhat of a calling card for Los Angeles this season. After going down three games to none in the opening round series to the San Jose Sharks, the Kings became just the fourth team in NHL history to come all the way back and win the final four games of the series.

After needing the full series length to get past the Anaheim Ducks and using an overtime Game 7 win to beat the Chicago Blackhawks — after falling behind 2-0 and 4-3 in the contest, of course — Los Angeles certainly didn’t make things easy for itself again. The Rangers jumped out to a quick 2-0 advantage in the first 15:03 of the first period on goals by Benoit Pouliot and Carl Hagelin, and seemed to be the better team in the early going.

“I think they had a lot of energy and (were) refreshed,” said Kings head coach Darryl Sutter of the Rangers. “If you look at their playoffs in the first periods, they’ve had really good first periods every game. You look at it, not I think, I know that we were not (on) full tanks.”

Somehow, those “gas tanks” were re-filled. And, one more time this postseason, the Kings showed resiliency and chipped away at the lead until Williams’ game-winner in overtime gave them a 1-0 series lead. But it remains to be seen just how much the intensity and effort from the series opener took out of them going forward.

“It’s Stanley Cup Finals, Game 1,” said Kings forward Kyle Clifford, who scored Los Angeles’ first goal. “It was definitely going to be a hard-fought game, and it was.”

If there were any lessons learned on the Rangers side, it’s that playing a full 60 minutes will be a necessity if they hope to come back.

“I feel when you play against such a good opponent that has all that strength you need to play a full game,” said New York head coach Alain Vigneault, whose team was outshot 22-5 over the final 24:36 of play. “For whatever reason tonight we just weren’t good enough in the third.”